Figure 2.6 Hall overview Empire of lights, exhibition of Duratrans Light Boxes in Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam (May–June 2015): www.krienclevis.com.
Notes
1This phenomenon has been linked to Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, in which he describes how his eating of a “Madeleine” as an adult reminds him of the happy moments in his childhood.
2Already in the late nineteenth century studies were done of people’s earliest memories (such as by Victor and Catherine Henry in 1896 and F.W. Colegrove in 1899). These studies revealed that early memories are nearly always described in visual terms, rather than in terms of smells or sounds. See also the chapter on “Flitsen in het duister: eerste herinneringen” in Draaisma, 2001.
3Norberg-Schulz, in Genius Loci, refers to Heidegger’s theory of poiēsis, which goes back to Greek antiquity. The notion of technē is linked directly to making. See also Wesseling, 2007.
4The British linguist and language philosopher John L. Austin was concerned with the relationship between “saying” and “doing” in language, thus providing the basis of contemporary debates on performativity. See also the introduction of Salter, 2002.
5Or as Henk Borgdorff puts it: “For the opposition between theory and practice as soon we learn to understand the dynamic of the emergent field as a chain of transformations, … interactions, and articulations that may ultimately produce more reality” (Borgdorff 2012).
6The genius loci refers to the atmospheric quality of a place whose meaning is rarely obvious right away. Indefinable by nature, the genius loci frequently determines a place’s feel and character. For more on this, see Norberg-Schulz, 1980, in particular the preface and Chapter I.
7The original title is La Chambre claire (Paris: Gallimard 1980). See in particular Chapter 2 on the notions of studium and punctum.
8The concept of intertextuality was launched by Julia Kristeva (1941) in 1969. She claimed that every text is intertextual in the sense that every text is built from a mosaic of existing texts. Rather than being an autonomous object or closed system, a text is always linked to other texts and, more broadly, the cultural context at large. For Kristeva, the text is a crossroads of all sorts of possible ideological (social, political, literary) systems which an author integrates in his text, be it consciously or not. These systems, then, are not so much tied to the author, but function autonomously.
9For the movie The Once and Future House (2013), in which the sound of the bore tunnels is processed, see: http://youtu.be/8VVwfZl_lUk
Works cited
Barthes, R. (1980), Camera Lucida. London: Vintage.
Borgdorff, H. (2012), The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden: Leiden University Press.
Draaisma, D. (2001), Waarom het leven sneller gaat als je ouder wordt. Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij.
Kruithof, J. (1995), Gezicht op Proust. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij.
Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980), Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. London: Academy Editions.
Salter, C. (2002), Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Wesseling, J. (2007), “Kunst als poiēsis”, in K. Zijlmans, R. Zwijnenberg and K. Clevis (eds) Co-ops. Interterritoriale verkenningen in kunst and wetenschap / Exploring new territories in art and science. Amsterdam: De Buitenkant.
sonic thought i
Walking into Sound
Lasse-Marc Riek
27.4.2010
11:45 granja (1)
11:55 stop
came across a fisherman
cross the inflow, shoes off!
hear the paiva in front of me
it runs directly into me
an engine top left, birds straight ahead
getting my feet dry, ants all over me
12:10 walking on
13:45 stop
a well, inflowing
the sound increases, decreases
then stepping into a room of sound
noises pour in slowly
well is sounding stronger on the left
right hand a field of crickets unfurls
walking the curve
well down left
well further down right
crickets rear left
crickets top right
13:48 an airplane afar
crossing diagonally from left hand side to rear right,
front right sonic swells up
birds top right
landscape
slowly
signal
echoes from above
14:00 fagosa (2)
tractors far and near
a rooster calls from up front
dogs barking loudly
people talking
cars rattle and roll
cuckoos far away, they’re many
afar, kids playing football
15:20 castro daire (3)
roads are small
it’s noisy, noisier than before
it’s acoustically hazardous on the streets
all the cars, trucks and busses
you need your ears to cross the street safely
in town, the connection to the river
the wells from the hills run into the river
15:36 onward
(to the) river means gush
flush, like getting lost in a rush
the white noise covers everything
concentration depletes
alongside the rocks the noisy river
17:50 ermida (4)
i do not see
i listen
a rustling
a chirr
villages
increasing engine noises
chats
radio
cacophonic
tractors, rattling, thunder afar
small cars kinda hissing close, honking
a dog yowls, barks
goats communicate
conversations separate
19:45 near ribas (5)
setting up the tent hillside
children’s duett valleyside
a skylark
in the centre a river
a lentic drone, white noise
crickets
rustling
silence
bats
hiking inside sound
permanent movement
increasing attention
swelling up
ebbing down
suddenly
stagnant
21:00 airplanes, very high above
28.4.2010
5:50 getting up
cricket concert
birds singing
6:00 chimes
a dog nearby the tent, closely
cuckoo, bright and clear
oscine birds kidding
a rooster signalizing
airplane noises afar
the river permanently
clusters forming up
7:00 chimes of the surrounding churches
8:00 ribas (5)
a vintage mountain village
early dwellers on the roads
silence
dogs barking
silence
a moped, humming
silence
8:40 pinhero (6)
having a rest at the church
some cars
the river behind me
oscine birds, inflow, river
straight through my body
this moment is sound
10:50 villa nova (7)
field
green
fragrance
work
heat
oscine birds
rustling in the eucalyptus
a senora with goats
i ask: “where is the path?”
walking
going
strolling
resting
18:00 ester (8)
uphill
; wind
a swishing in the broom
downhill
through the dry eucalyptus
stroking
uphill
a swishing in the heather
wind
downhill
setting up my tent
right at the river
hills to the left and to the right
noises all around
acoustically blind
19:00 a boar inside the tent
i fall asleep dazed
29.4.2010
7:00 getting up
eat, listen
flow, listen
stroking stones
8:00 onward
backward
uphill
a swishing in the heather
downhill
through the dry eucalyptus
stroking
uphill
a swishing in the broom
downhill
10:00 airplane, very high above
uphill
road
engines
downhill
the river rushes
downhill
the river rushes
the river gurgles
cows jingle
dogs bark
across the bridge
11:50 nodar (9)
the river rushes
−1 granja 11:45, 27.4.2010
−2 fagosa
−3 castro daire
−4 ermida
−5 ribas 19:45, 28.4.2010
−6 pinhero
−7 villa nova
−8 ester 19:00, 29.4.2010
−9 nodar
Notes
A listening diary about a three-day listeningwalk (approx. 40 km) at the bank of the “Paiva” River around Nodar, Portugal.
Six apples, three bananas, a bottle with water, pencil, paper for notes, digicam for photos, tent, clothes and a few printouts of a topographic map from the region.
The Paiva River, 112 km (from Carapito in Moimenta da Beira to Castelo de Paiva).
The listeningwalk was part of work I did during an Artist in Residence Project in 2010 which was called “Paivascapes” organized by Binauralmedia in Nodar.
Thanks to Daniel Schiller, Stefan Militzer and Luis Costa.
3
Soundscape as a System and an Auditory Gestalt
Sabine Breitsameter
Viel hat von Morgen an, Seit ein Gespräch wir sind und hören voneinander, Erfahren der Mensch; bald sind wir aber Gesang.
Much from tomorrow on since we exist as conversation, listening to each other have human beings undergone; but soon shall we be song.
Friedrich Hölderlin (1958: 148)
“[S]eit ein Gespräch wir sind und hören voneinander …”/“… since we exist as conversation, listening to each other.…” This is the line of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, a German poet from the beginning of the nineteenth century, who is famous for his highly philosophical verses. While it may seem unusual to start an analysis of Acoustic Ecology and soundscape with Hölderlin, this perplexing verse both intellectually and aesthetically frames the conceptual substructure of the principles of soundscape, a term coined by the Canadian pedagogue, sound researcher, and composer R. Murray Schafer (1969).
Hölderlin’s words richly reflect the factual and contentual surface of acoustic ecology, which explores environment as a conceptual approach or mindset, allowing sound to be considered beyond ostensible thematic ascriptions to offer occasions for what I term formative listening1 (Breitsameter 2011). The topos of conversation, to which Hölderlin enigmatically refers, serves here as an initial inspiration and catalyst.
Schafer’s terms soundscape and acoustic ecology
In 1977, the Canadian composer, pedagogue, and sound researcher R. Murray Schafer published his most influential book, The Tuning of the World (Schafer 1977), in which he coined two innovative terms: soundscape and acoustic ecology. According to Schafer, a soundscape is the sonic envelope which surrounds a listener in a certain place or space. It includes all sounds—even small and distant ones creating consciousness for those sounds that are usually ignored. Schafer once explained his term thus: “To see the landscape with the ears.”2 This means the geographical, biological, social, religious, and cultural conditions of an environment contribute to a soundscape, which can be considered the sonic representation of living material and immaterial presences in a certain space or place.
Schafer’s term acoustic ecology addresses the sonic interdependencies between living beings and their environments. It became prevalent in the discourse that followed Schafer’s main publication, referring to the influences between environmental conditions and sonic occurrences, especially events and developments with harmful consequences for the sonic environment of a certain place or space. The pollution of air and water, for example, result in a quieter forest environment, which often leads to vegetation loss and, thus, to an even quieter forest.
In another example, a high noise level in a pub results in louder and louder conversations. This affects not only the quality of communication but also health, for example causing a sore throat from talking too loudly, or hearing loss issues. The consequences of pollution are considered typical topics for acoustic ecology, as they include physical damage, communication difficulties, and loss of sonic diversity and auditory quality in general.
Schafer criticizes urban soundscapes, which he considers dominated by the constant hum of air conditioners, the rattling of construction machines, and non-stop motor sounds. For him, they manifest industrial society’s fundamental values: efficiency, mobility, and consumption, leading to a dense sound mix resulting in impenetrable sound walls, which Schafer calls lo-fi, an experience which makes specific, quiet, and distant sounds difficult to distinguish. These sounds of everyday life have become, according to Schafer, waste products of certain immutable functions, and are prioritized against health, individual and social well-being, autonomy of perception, and aesthetic pleasure (Schafer 1977: 3–11).
As successful communication and unpolluted natural resources came to be considered as lower-ranking values, acoustic ecology gained a political dimension. “Soundscapes provide information on an environment’s natural and social consistency, and allow to draw inferences about its priorities, deficits and power structures” (Schafer in Breitsameter 1994: 8).
It is no coincidence that the late 1980s brought Schafer’s ideas of acoustic ecology to a larger and international audience, especially in Europe, as the broadening of the ecological political movement took place at this time. The public response to Schafer’s thoughts focused mainly on aspects of environmental pollution. As he exemplified many of his ideas based on describing ancient or rural soundscapes, and the disappearance of natural sounds in favor of urban or technological sounds, it has become popular to locate the ecological core of acoustic ecology in Schafer’s assumed idealization of “nature.” Many of his proponents and companions added to this image. From this, however, stems an abridged and misleading understanding of acoustic ecology, as “romantic,” technophobic, and aesthetically normative, which inhibited—especially in Germany—the academic discussion of it.3
Underneath this layer of superficial interpretation, we will become aware of a different concept of acoustic ecology and to the quite essential way of sound thinking which it allows.
Soundscape as a field approach
A soundscape is not a monolithic entity but a plurality characterized by diverse elements, which are the sounds and the mechanisms of its origins. In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) McLuhan explains that it is not the medium’s content which conveys communication, but the medium as such understood as a “field.” All elements of this field exert mutual influence on each other, so this field forms an open system that transforms, adapts and incorporates everything that it gets in touch with. McLuhan calls this also a “mosaic approach” (McLuhan 1962: before p. 1). His focus is not on partial aspects of the medium, but he unde
rstands it as an entity of configuration and dynamic relationships.4
It is this “instant total awareness” (ibid.) which suspends sequentiality and linearity, making such a “field” approach plausible. The Schafer soundscape model is similar. It turns away from a selective attitude of hearing (listening to a certain content or signal, and ignoring others, or qualifying them as “noise”), but seeks to foster an evenly applied attention to all sounds simultaneously.
This “mosaic approach”—the attention to “all sounds at once”—emphasizes the auditory with respect to the visual, as it liberates it from its routine filtering and ignoring, and expands it. Its auditory experience is like the one of a polyphonic structure in a musical piece, where independent elements merge to an entirety. The utilitarian perceptual habits of everyday life are closely interrelated—as Schafer describes throughout his book—with the predominance of the visual culture, and—as McLuhan made aware and Schafer implicitly confirms—its cultivation of distancing, sequentiality, and linearity. Thus, the mosaic approach is a prerequisite to enabling an ear-centered perceptual concept and attitude.
Soundscape and environmental Gestalt
The term environment took on significance in aesthetic discourse when McLuhan identified it as a crucial concept.5 It is deeply interrelated with his mosaic approach. Consequentially, environments are not “passive containers,” but “active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike” (McLuhan 1962: 7), including existing phenomena and society’s tools and practices, constantly reconfiguring them in the very moment, as well as throughout history, transforming recipients to effective elements and involving those as the environment’s active parts. Such an environmental Gestalt is pluralistic and dynamic, contrary to the notion of a homogenous object with well-defined contours. From here it is only a small step to the notion of soundscape.
Sonic Thinking Page 6